David Starr Jordan
David Starr Jordan was the founding president of Stanford University, serving from 1891 to 1913. He was an ichthyologist during his research career. Prior to serving as president of Stanford University, he served as president of Indiana University from 1885 to 1891.
Jordan was also a strong supporter of eugenics, and his published views expressed a fear of "race-degeneration", asserting that cattle and human beings are "governed by the same laws of selection". He was an antimilitarist since he believed that war killed off the best members of the gene pool, and he initially opposed American involvement in World War I.
Early life and education
Jordan was born in Gainesville, New York, and grew up on a farm in upstate New York. His parents made an unorthodox decision to educate him at a local girls' high school. His middle name, Starr, does not appear in early census records, and was apparently self-selected; he had begun using it by the time that he was enrolled at Cornell. He said that it was in honour of his mother's devotion to the minister Thomas Starr King but also due to his admiration for the night sky which he expressed at a young age.He was inspired by Louis Agassiz to pursue his studies in ichthyology. In the mid-19th century Agassiz was incomparably influential and trained "nearly all" of the leading naturalists in the United States. Simultaneously, according to historian Donald Yacovone, "His revulsion for African Americans and his insistence on their inherent inferiority knew no limits. The influence of damaging ideas cannot be overestimated." Jordan was part of the first freshman class of undergraduates at Cornell University, where he graduated in 1872 with a master's degree in botany.
In his autobiography, The Days of a Man, he wrote, "During the three years which followed , I completed all the requirements for a degree of Bachelor of Science, besides about two year of advanced work in Botany. Taking this last into consideration, the faculty conferred on me at graduation in June 1872, the advanced degree of Master of Science instead of the conventional Bachelor's Degree ... it was afterward voted not to grant any second degree within a year after the Bachelor had been received. I was placed, quite innocently, in the position of being the only graduate of Cornell to merge two degrees into one." His master's thesis was on the topic "The Wild Flowers of Wyoming County".
Jordan initially taught natural history courses at several small Midwestern colleges and secondary schools, including at Indianapolis High School.
In 1875, while in Indianapolis, Jordan obtained a Doctor of Medicine degree from Indiana Medical College. The Indiana Medical College in Indianapolis opened in 1869, but merged out of existence in 1878. Standards at the college were not particularly high. Jordan himself, reflecting on the experience noted that "I was also able to spend some time in the Medical College, from which, in the spring of 1875, I received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, though it had not at all been my intention to enter that profession." The following year, in 1876, Jordan taught comparative anatomy at the college.
Jordan also holds an honorary PhD, awarded to him by Butler University in 1877.
Career
In 1879, Jordan was accepted into the natural history faculty of Indiana University Bloomington, where he served as a professor of zoology. His teaching included his version of eugenics, which "sought to prevent the decay of the Anglo-Saxon/Nordic race by limiting racial mixing and by preventing the reproduction of those he deemed unfit."Indiana University president
In January 1885, he began his tenure as president of Indiana University and became the nation's youngest university president at only 34 and the first Indiana University president who was not an ordained minister.He improved the university's finances and public image, doubled its enrollment, and instituted an elective system; like Cornell's, it was an early application of the modern liberal arts curriculum.
Stanford University president
In March 1891, he was approached by Leland and Jane Stanford, who offered him the presidency of Leland Stanford Junior University, which was about to open in California. Andrew Dickson White, the co-founder and first president of Cornell University, who offered him the position, recommended Jordan to the Stanfords based on an educational philosophy fit with the Stanfords' vision of a nonsectarian co-educational school with a liberal arts curriculum. Jordan quickly accepted the offer, arrived at Stanford in June 1891, and immediately set about recruiting faculty for the university's planned September opening. Pressed for time, he drew heavily on his own acquaintances; most of the 15 founding professors came either from Cornell or Indiana University. That first year at Stanford, Jordan was instrumental in establishing the university's Hopkins Marine Station. He served Stanford as president until 1913 and then chancellor until his retirement in 1916. The university decided not to renew his three-year-term as chancellor in 1916. As the years went on, Jordan became increasingly alienated from the university.While he was chancellor, he was elected president of the National Education Association. Jordan was a member in the Bohemian Club and the University Club in San Francisco. Jordan served as a director of the Sierra Club from 1892 to 1903. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1905.
David Starr Jordan House
In 1905, he was one of the first professors to build a summer home at the northeast corner of Camino Real and 7th Avenue, on what became known as "Professors' Row" in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He was good friends with Stanford University professor of entomology Vernon Lyman Kellogg, who also lived in Carmel.Eugenics
In 1899, Jordan delivered an essay at Stanford on behalf of racial segregation and racial purity. In the essay, Jordan claimed that "For a race of men or a herd of cattle are governed by the same laws of selection." Jordan expressed concern about "race degeneration" that would occur unless efforts were made to maintain "racial unity".Eugenics-based argument against war
Jordan argued that peace was preferable to warfare because war removed the strongest men from the gene pool. He said, "Future war is impossible because the nations cannot afford it." As one commentator put it, "Though he found meager evidence to support his preconceptions, he still confidently asserted that 'always and everywhere, war means the reversal of natural selection.Jordan was president of the World Peace Foundation from 1910 to 1914 and president of the World Peace Conference in 1915 and initially opposed American entry into World War I although he changed his position in 1917 after he became convinced that a German victory would threaten democracy.
"The Blood of the Nation"
Soon after it was first delivered, the essay was published by the American Unitarian Association under the main title of "The Blood of the Nation" and a subtitle of "A Study of the Decay of Races Through the Survival of the Unfit." Multiple editions of that version followed over the next few years.An expanded version of the essay was delivered in Philadelphia at the 200th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth in 1906 and printed by the American Philosophical Society. The following year, an expanded version of the original essay with an embossed cover was published by Beacon Press in Boston under the new main title "The Human Harvest" and the same subtitle. This new version was dedicated to Jordan's older brother Rufus, who had volunteered to fight in the American Civil War and, according to Jordan, was part of the "'Human Harvest' of 1862." Jordan's eugenic and anti-war views may have been in part shaped by the death of his brother in 1862 from a 'camp fever,' likely typhoid, immediately after enlisting to fight in the American civil war.
In 1910, the original and slimmer version of the essay was again published by the American Unitarian Association in a "less expensive form to insure the widest possible distribution."
In 1915, Jordan published an "extended treatise on the same subject" titled War and Breed again through the Beacon Press in Boston. Here Jordan defines and begins to employ the relatively recent term "eugenics" and its opposite "dysgenics".